Mike Morrison

Thank you! Will DM actual research questions.

Could use a few more participants in our study of scientific slide design. Got a sec to go through some example slides then rate them? 🙏
nimble.li/p9lxzlz9

As a bonus, you get to learn some random facts.

#scienceUX

lol I was all “wait, can I use an emoji?” And then so happy when that worked.

Flyer for Water Whys Visual SciComm Seminar Fall 2025 Series with pictures of speakers and their talk information. October 3 at 11am noon / 2pm ET, Celeste Frazier Barthel's talk is Visual Science Communication Goes 3D. October 17 (same time) Mike Morrison's talk is Design, for Scientists: Help people pay attention to research and love it. October 31 (same time) Shiloe Fontes' talk is Where Science Meets Art: Sparking Curiosity Through Creativity. November 14 11am AZ time/1pm ET Megan Roxbury's talk is Creative Negotiation: Navigating Interdisciplinary Teams and Projects. Register for each session separately to receive Zoom link, registration link in post.

It's time to talk visual science communication again!
@waterwhysua.bsky.social is back with unique conversations around visual science communication including @mikemorrison.bsky.social Oct. 17.
Free talks every other Friday on Zoom start tomorrow. Register now waterwhys.org/seminar/fall... #SciComm

Cool poster and cool program! And 💯 totally agree that posters can be like a main event instead of the afterthought. Where else can you learn such a wide array of new research so fast with so much individual creativity?

My betterposter from ESA

Big believer that posters are better than talks at conferences. After presentating my first #BetterPoster at #ESA2025, that has only been reinforced.

😍 So happy to see this. HHMI is going to create so much positive change in scientific publishing with this.

Now that big funders are embracing the preprint, we can focus on upgrading the preprint to be better than the journal article ever was. Born #openacces makes so much possible.

better than average science day?

• sperm whale eating a giant squid confirmed
• HHMI policy: preprints as most important form of publication

HHMI adopts Plan U journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

This is really motivating. Some evidence that if we help people self-discover science, it’ll help science erode mere popular opinion a little?

A mock-up of what the first spread of “The promise and limitations of using GenAI to reduce climate scepticism” (Hornsey et al., 2025) article would look like printed.

Across two studies, we found that short conversations with ChatGPT led climate sceptics to report lower confidence in their sceptical views and small increases in pro-environmental intentions.

You can read the article here:
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

As a species, can we please agree to write all dates like "Sep 10" instead of 10/9 or 9/10?

Signed,
– An American expat in Hong Kong who is not sure if this Australian yogurt is expired.

What do you think will be the short- and long-term consequences of these new payment limits in #AcademicPublishing?

Do you think publishers will just raise their rates to the new cap?

🧪

I think same?!

2, please 2.

Same. They ruin/ed everything eventually.

Never thought I’d miss “one banner at the top and that’s it!”

That’s both more elegant and slightly more insane than my approach of saving Frankenstein-stitched screenshots of the “good parts” of the recipe page 😂

This is also why, whenever I eventually manage to get a recipe I like, I hold on to it for dear life (and so I save the actual recipe part in my phone's telephone book - as if it were a person)

Which would you prefer?
1. ChatGPT
2. Google & The entire internet --- but without ads, spammy content, etc. Like recipe sites would just give you the recipe with photos.

For posters! Articles are KIND OF different. You may have 1 minute or more of avg attention versus 10sec with posters. And trad journals are rigid.

It is a really counter-intuitive way to think about storytelling though. I still struggle with it daily even though I’m out here preaching it.

This is fascinating but frustrating to hear. I already wrote my paper. I am waiting to see if it is accepted by the journal. The conclusion is extremely abstract and counterintuitive without carefully laying out the reasoning that built it. My first book follows this pattern though. #writersky

YouTube video by Mike Morrison, PhD Helping Doctors Without Borders improve their research posters

Doctors Without Borders goes #betterposter! 🥳

Our #ScienceUX community created an evidence-based poster template to improve science communication at the MSF Pediatric conference this year.

Video explains design choices:
youtu.be/1QoYDeYu59k

Well said! Hadn’t even thought of this as being made worse by scope creep but you’re totally right.

Anyways, will have more updates on embed adoption in near future!

I want this now. Everywhere!
It didn't used to be so necessary, when each paper reported ~1 result. But now a single paper can include many results, sometimes of variable robustness.
So, we should either return to ~1 result/paper, or cite individual results/figures.

YouTube video by Mike Morrison The future of academic citations: Embeds

It is really surreal how hard most scientific publishing sites fight to prevent you from downloading even a single graph.

Figure embeds with authorship chains can't happen soon enough.
youtu.be/A2JpI-5NIsc?...

💯 This is exactly what I've been trying to say in like 100 workshops and videos on research posters.

State a conclusion, then defend it.

Versus working up to it over 500 words that people won't spend the time to read.

Yes very relevant! Basically I think we need to flip the narrative upside down in most science communication. Start with a conclusion, then defend it. That’s faster, and I think done right it also preserves healthy skepticism of results.

From PDFs to Possibilities - Curvenote Blog Welcoming product visionary Jillian Hale as we build a modular, dynamic future for research. Jillian’s background spans product strategy, communication, and platform design. She brings a unique blend ...

Announcing a key addition to our team: @buildwithjill.bsky.social, our Product Lead.

With Jillian’s leadership, we’re evolving Curvenote into a platform where scientific work—figures, code, data, text—can be easily created, connected, reused, and shared.

Read more: curvenote.com/blog/jillian...

Thrilled to be on this amazing team and be part of the mission to help science move beyond the PDF! 🚀

Really want to get you, me, and Nicholas Rowe together for a panel or podcast or something — as like the only three Poster Scientists I’m aware of in the world 😂